Bombs, bowls and bass: Fishing and studying at Wilderness State Park

A hazy heat lay over the flats. Water blurred into sky at the horizon, and dunes to the south faded into the lake.

In shallow water, fish played spawning tag in the shallows. If you wanted to, you could drop a fly or a spinner in front of their faces and see them charge off their nests to investigate the intruder.

It could be Florida or the Bahamas, and those cruising shadows could be bonefish, but it’s not. The trees surrounding the sandy and rocky flats are pines, not palms, and the fish cruising in are in freshwater, not salt.

It’s a warm day in late May, and smallmouth bass have come to Wilderness State Park’s coastline to spawn.

Smallmouth are hard-fighting, aggressive fish, and anglers have long fished for them at Wilderness State Park — particularly after the bombs stopped dropping on the Lake Michigan shoreline.

Yes, bombs.

Before World War II, there was a Civilian Conservation Corps camp where Wilderness State Park is now located, and during the war, the U.S. Army Air Corps used the camp for target practice.

Specifically, the Corps were testing early drone warcraft, said Burr Mitchell, unit supervisor with Wilderness State Park.

The test runs ran along Waugoshance Point, the peninsula of land that curves west into Lake Michigan off of Wilderness State Park.

“The Corps were using the point and lighthouse as targeting runs for bombing practice, and that’s where the craters came from,” said Mitchell. “Some were live bombs that they dropped, but the majority of them were dud bombs.”

So there’s a reason one of the bays, called Goose Bay, at Waugoshance Point is suspiciously bowl-like — some of the live bombs the Corps dropped formed craters along the point, said Mitchell.

After the target practice stopped and Wilderness opened as a state park, in the 1950s, a Ph.D. student named William Carl Latta wanted to study the fishery, said fisheries ecologist Tracy Galarowicz, who teaches at Central Michigan University.

“In (the study), Lotta talks about concern with the fishery, that Wilderness State Park opened up access to those fish, and people were fishing for those smallmouth,” said Galarowicz. “He had concerns the numbers were going down.”

The same concern cropped up with population numbers in the 1970s and 1980s on Beaver Island, said Galarowicz.

Those concerns were lucky for Galarowicz. They mean she has a set of data against which to compare her own data. She, with Central Michigan University as well as the Michigan Department of Natural Resources are conducting studies of the bass both at Wilderness State Park and Beaver Island.

“Until the last few years, Latta’s work was really the only smallmouth bass study in the northern Great Lakes,” said Galarowicz. “It defined what we knew about smallmouth bass populations, population size and population growth.”

Since then, said Galarowicz, both fishing regulations and the Great Lakes ecosystem have changed.

Invasive species such as zebra mussels, quagga mussels and round gobies have invaded the Great Lakes. Water quality has changed — and all of that has impacted the lake ecosystem.

“How the bass population differed is really what started us, though,” said Galarowicz. “We were just really interested in the movement between the two fisheries. We said, we have gotta get over there and start sampling.”

The Beaver Island study began in 2005, and the Waugoshance Point study began in 2009.

Researchers use methods similar to Latta’s methods. They set up trap nets, which are large boxes with a series of funnels in them. The box has wings off to its side that lead bass into the box, and then the funnels. The nets are set for 24 hours, and the netting takes place in late May and early June.

After the researchers bring up the nets, they measure the fish for length and weight, take scales to assess age and growth, and clip the fish’s anal fin to show the fish has been caught. Adult fish are given lip tags.

What the researchers have found so far has surprised them: the bass are traveling. A lot.

“They’re moving a quite a bit more than we expected,” said Galarowicz. “I had a call on Friday from a man from Cheboygan who had gone up to the Upper Peninsula, and caught a bass on the northern lakeshore.”

The bass had been lip-tagged in the Beaver Island and Waugoshance studies.

The fish aren’t just traveling — they’re getting bigger, faster. Central Michigan graduate student Emily Martin studied information gathered at Waugoshance Point and compared it to the study done in the 1950s by Latta.

“Though total catch of smallmouth bass is similar to that of the 1950s,” reads her thesis, the bass are heavier and longer for their age class.

Galarowicz said the researchers are seeing a similar result at Beaver Island.

“The comparison of weight to a given length — basically, how fat a fish is — is up,” she said.

Galarowicz said though the researchers don’t have much data about the fish’s diet, they believe at least one invasive species is behind the fish’s increased size.

“We suspect it really has to do with changes in the diet and presence of gobies,” said Galarowicz.

The researcher said while the studies are teaching researchers more about smallmouth bass populations in the northern Great Lakes, more questions are popping up.

“Some about the basic ecology of the fish — why are they there, why are they growing so fast, why are they doing so well, and why are they moving,” Galarowicz said, adding that learning about the bass population will help inform regulation decisions.

And there’s one more exciting aspect to the study: its direct application to anglers.

“The people that fish (at Waugoshance) are passionate about it,” said Galarowicz. “We got a letter from a boy who was 10, and was finally big enough to wade out with his grandpa fishing, and he sent us a letter. I just like hearing that people are using the resource.”

Catch-and-immediate-release season for bass opened on April 27 for the Lower Peninsula and May 15 for the Upper Peninsula. Catch-and-keep season opens for all waters May 25.

If you catch a fish with a jaw tag, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Central Michigan University would like you to report the date, capture location and tag number to either the Central Michigan University Biological Station on Beaver Island, or the MDNR.

Some smallmouth bass have been planted with acoustic transmitters, and those bass are marked with one silver and one blue tag. If you capture one of these fish, the researchers ask that you return the fish immediately to the water. If you harvest the fish, contact the CMU Biological Station to return the transmitter and jaw tags.